Faculty of Science news

Organic farming is widely perceived to be a healthy, more environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional agricultural techniques. But its role in providing for an increasingly crowded planet remains unclear with its merits hotly contested.

Scientists call it the "cocktail party problem." To understand the person talking to you in a noisy room, you've got to filter out all of the conversations, clinking glass, and other noises in the background.

The McGill University and Génome Québec Innovation Centre is pleased to announce that they have been awarded funding totalling $7.6 million over a two-year period from Genome Canada’s 2010 Competition. This award, a record for Québec, will fund the operations of the Innovation Centre as well as the services offered to scientific communities in Québec, the rest of Canada and around the world.

A current controversy raging in evolutionary biology is about whether adaptation to new environments is the result of many genes, each of relatively small effect, or just a few genes of large effect. A new study published in Molecular Ecology by McGill biologist Andrew Hendry and a colleague from Basel University strongly supports the first “many-small” hypothesis.

A new U.S. report says foreign species carried into the Great Lakes by ships are causing tens of millions of dollars in damage to the ecosystem. However, Canadian experts are questioning the figures, saying you cannot easily put a price on damages caused by invasive species.

Nine McGill researchers were among the 132 newly awarded or renewed Canada Research Chairs just announced by the Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology. The McGill CRCs work in fields ranging from social statistics and family change to the cognitive neuroscience of attention and expectation.

In a study published in Nature, Alfonso Mucci, of the Department of Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences worked with colleagues from Concordia University to study the chemical makeup of sediment samples from oceans around the world to show how iron oxides can remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere.

For those involved in managing the fallout from environmental disasters such as oil spills, it is essential to have tools that predict how the oil will move. McGill Engineering professor George Haller has worked with Prof. Josefina Olascoaga,from the University of Miami to develop a method that does not simply track: it actually forecasts major changes in the way that oil spills will move.